Without Honor or Humanity, Book 1
by Another BeatPunk
Summary: In the near future, a desperate government attempts to reeducate its youths with a twisted game of life and death. Inspired by Koshun Takami's Battle Royale.


**The Day of Reckoning**

**Mileston, NY **

**November 11, 2011 **

**7:42 PM**

From the crowded high school parking lot, she could see the spectacle of the football game and feel the fervor of school spirit. The night sky was illuminated by massive sports lights, drowning out the brilliant stars. Shadows danced around the parking lot like lost souls, specters of better days. A couple embraced, becoming one in the freedom of the dark. Loud cheering, satanic chanting floated through the night air. "Go, Go, Go, Go, Go…"

Normally, the large girl would be dripping with the sweat of anxiety and fear. Not this time. She remained calm, shockingly so, and completely fearless. Dark hair, frizzy and entwined, flowed down her face and shielded her eyes. These eyes were once soft and innocent, truly youthful. Now they had turned dark and severe with the loss of innocence and the corruption of hate. They followed the crowded path to the blinding light of the arena. Her eyes met no one as she dragged herself through a sea of cheerful classmates.

"One dollar," a voice from behind the booth demanded. She knew him from the marching band, but said nothing and continued to her destination.

The football team was in bloody combat, and in full view. Behind the spindly metal gate with its spider like pattern, they looked like modern day gladiatorial combatants. Powerful and proud, brilliantly executing their orders and any that stood in the way. The score was 5-1, in favor of her school. The girl didn't care. She hated them.

The cool fall air sliced through her skin. She wrapped herself tightly in the long black trench coat and could feel the bulky apparatus. No one would notice. She was fat anyway. And ugly too. No one would notice her otherwise. Unless, of course, it was her turn to be viciously picked on, beration. Sometimes she got it, sometimes she didn't. Ignoring the painful memories she made her way up the metal steps to the bleachers, a resounding thump with each step on the wide, sheen metal steps.

The bleachers were swarming with the fat, ugly girl's classmates. Some of them had their faces painted in the school colors, white and blue, most of them dressed with school pride. They blended into one another, a single giant entity, a collective of the school elite. Normally, she wouldn't attend such an event, wouldn't be welcome at a gathering of the popular. She knew it. That's why she had come.

"MILES-TON! MILES-TON! MILES-TON!"

The evil cheering, prideful chanting continued. They looked like demons, fangs bared, dripping with bloodlust. Red eyes glowing with evil energy. Fists raised in unison driving invisible stakes into the hearts of the innocent. The girl watched in horror and disgust at her fellow student plagued by the virus of ignorance. She had always viewed her classmates as monsters, slimy serpents in the skin of a man, but they had never looked this terrifying before. So she watched, her gaze lifted only once her piers noticed her. That notice came in the form of an empty beer can whipped at her head.

"Get out of the way you fat oaf!"

A squeaky voice laughed in the distance. She didn't see who it was, nor did she care. They will all pay. So she trudged along, her head a littler lower, and cut a path through the middle of the bleachers. Best to strike at the heart.

The fat oaf mad her way up the stairway to hell, avoiding eye contact with the beautiful demons. Their gaze pierced her body and dissected her soul. Some of them threw insults, others whatever was in hand; the girl was a bulging black target and nothing more. She felt a soft object graze her shoulder and then saw the colorfully-packaged tampon hit the ground. Ah yes, the popular girls, the beautiful people, who else? She headed straight for them.

"What the hell are you doing here?" asked the ice princess from English class, "there's no pig section at these games."

The pig said nothing, only quietly settled on the cold bleacher. Days ago the comment would have brought tears to her eyes, now it only provided more of the harsh confirmation she needed. They would pay soon enough. The thought brought a twisted smile to her pudgy face. The well-admired blonde continued her verbal onslaught. This only transformed what was once a smile into a hideous, malicious grin.

"Can't you hear me? Or are you ugly, fat AND deaf?"

No response. No comment. Not this time. She wasn't even going to attempt to fight back. No, she was only going to wait. Wait for the chanting to reach a peak, for the demonic cult of blue and white to shriek their final battle call. Quarter's end countdown; when the Neanderthals, the barbarians in pads and helmets, would return to the seats below. The ugly, fat, deaf girl wanted them dead, pleading to St. Peter for forgiveness, too. Her revenge was not just for the harem, the beautiful whores that engulfed and devoured her. She wanted them all to pay.

"Speak up, pig face," another monstrously exquisite princess demanded.

So, she watched the game. With unwavering concentration she gazed at the time clock. Three minutes, Sixteen seconds to go. The verbal onslaught continued. Ugly. Bitch. Pig. Cunt. Trash. Whore. Dirt. Freak. Dyke. Nothing new. The same insults thrown at her during physical education class, when she cost the athletic girls a victory, or English class, when she had to read a devastatingly honest poem aloud, or Science class, when she gave the wrong answer because she spent the previous night wallowing in tears and despondency and was too crippled to study. Cruelty was nothing new; in fact it was a way of life. A burden she had to bear for being an ugly, fat, unpopular, dyke pig.

"Not going to leave?" The succubus paused, waiting for an answer. "No? Then have a drink, bitch!"

The sensation of cold, sticky liquid (Vodka and orange juice, maybe?) plastering her already matted hair, flowing down her mottled face, and seeping into her dark trench coat was entirely new. She caught a few droplets with her tongue, and tasted the bittersweet concoction. Tasty. The taste of victory was something like a wine cooler. Mmm, pulpy. Bigger bits than this bitch would be in. She began to laugh, an ugly and menacing cackle, a shockwave of hatred blasting the crowd. The girls around her said nothing. Perhaps it was instinct that drove them to realize something was amiss, that death had come to town in the shell of an ugly, deaf, dyke fat bitch. The same pig that went to class, the girl who said nothing, only absorbed the abuse, and spilled the cruelty with tired tears. It was too late, the countdown had begun, long before the bleachers were even filled...

"Ten...nine...eight..."

The crowd erupted with volcanic intensity. The wide, jagged jaws of serpentine men thrashing in the cool fall wind. Praying to idols of death and destruction, urging, daring death to free them from this world.

"Seven...six...five..."

She would do as they command. With eyes warped with hatred, hands trembling with excitement- the sadistic joy of the ultimate retribution- the girl reached for the string dangling at her side.

"Four...three...two..."

A torrent of memories swirled inside her head, drowning out her soul, a little girl with dreams of happiness struggling for air. She had thought the girl was dead. No, she was begging for help, screaming for her very life. Her pleads were cut short, her head submerging with each memory of Hate and Monstrosity. She struggled, fought with intensity, the need to live, survive the struggles, overcome the obstacles of evil. But it was too late. The day of reckoning was already at hand.

"One!"

-

_(Excerpt from The History of the Global Alliance by Joshua Uchimura: New York, McRodry Publishing, 2054)_

_Forty-two students lost their lives that night, with another two-hundred and fourteen reported wounded. Marcy Mercer (known from then on as "Mad Mary") became something of a cult figure, with legions of sympathetic teenagers across the country creating websites and message boards devoted to her cause. The girl was strapped with explosive materials she had stolen from Mileston High School's science lab, and the bomb itself was rigged with shrapnel and small steel orbs. Mary had transformed herself into a living claymore mine. _

_The destruction she had caused was significant. A fifteen foot crater stood in the center of the metal bleachers, leaving remnants of the students nearest to the blast in miniscule pieces. The shrapnel from the explosion had left surviving students blind, crippled, brain-damaged, and for a "lucky" few, permanently scarred. The incident came to be known as the Mileston Massacre, and was not the first, nor the last of similar crimes, but was notably the worst. _

_The National Youth Re-Education Act: Zero-Sum Initiative, which had been rejected numerous times previously, was, as a direct result of the Mileston Massacre, swiftly put into effect. The act was going to "forever change the attitude of our youth" and "return to this country the dedicated and hard working individuals of previous years." In simple terms, the act would pit student-against-student in one of the most vicious games of musical chairs ever devised, a fight, a Battle Royale, to the death._


End file.
